1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to a rotary fluff mill having a special arrangement of hammers and feed of material to produce a fluff product having great absorbency for use in production of household absorbent goods, such as disposable baby diapers and feminine napkins.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Fluff is a product whose source is a bleached wood fiber that is ground and laid out in matt form that renders it absorbent. While the product from this source is known, the apparatus for converting the pulp to a fluff has had several acute problems in setting up a grinding mill to yield the best or most acceptable conditions to obtain the most absorbent fluff product at minimum cost. More specifically, the older mills were provided with non-adjustable breaker bars that could only be adjusted and manually fitted while the mill was not operating. It is understood that it is necessary to control the gap spacing between the hammer circle of travel and the breaker bar in order to control the production of broken fibers versus unground material. These factors are important to yield a final product with ability to absorb more or less fluids. Control over the gap spacing is difficult with known types of mills due to the wide variances in tolerances in the manufacturer of such mills.
There are other problems in the prior art such as the usual feed of the material in a direction generally tangential to the hammer circle which requires an excess of power conumption in the drive for the mill. Another problem resides in following the conventional practice of arranging the hammers in spaced relation which creates dead zones where no grinding occurs, this being the result of the use of solid center discs and conventional hammers which are not dimensionally accurate and which cannot hold proper clearance of the breaker plate at the hammer circle.